NamedWork: The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler
Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667-1783 (Nonfiction work)

Persons:

Reviewee: Preston, David L.

Accession Number:

279722831

Full Text:

Preston, David L. The Texture of Contact: European and Indian
Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667-1783. Lincoln,
NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. x + 408 pages. Cloth, $45.00.

In The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities
on the Frontiers' of Iroquoia, 1667-1783, historian David Preston
offers a nuanced, thoroughly researched analysis of European and Indian
relationships on the frontiers of the Iroquois confederacy. Where
previous scholars have described nearly unremitting conflict, Preston
finds a world where violence was not inevitable and where daily
interactions between the French, English, Iroquois, Dutch, Hurons,
Abenakis and others were generally characterized by peaceful
co-existence. While he acknowledges the bloodshed that did take place,
Preston argues that in their focus on the actions of imperial elites,
earlier historians have missed the important local relationships that
dominated daily interaction on the frontier. Cultural negotiations took
place not only in formal diplomatic meetings but also in the mundane
acts of securing food, shelter, and land. Ironically, as Preston
demonstrates, the very closeness of the intercultural relationships that
were formed on the frontier made the violence of the mid-nineteenth
century all the more devastating, as "both Indian and European
settlers understood the war as a profound betrayal" (p. 149). The
fighting was not between strangers who failed to understand cultural
difference, asserts Preston, but between neighbors who had long-lasting,
complex relationships.

The backcountry of Pennsylvania and New York is familiar ground to
historians with an interest in European/Native American relations, and
the narrative of racially charged violence has been a focus of numerous
studies in the past. Where Francis Jennings saw an unrelenting invasion
of European imperialists in The Invasion of America (1975), James
Merrell identified a network of semi-professional cultural brokers
mediating peace and war in Into the American Woods (2000). Most
recently, Peter Silver's excellent Our Savage Neighbors'
(2009) found the beginnings of racial consciousness being forged in the
crucible of frontier violence. By examining local records that many
historians have long overlooked, Preston is able to bring a fresh
perspective to the field. What emerges is a sophisticated analysis that
takes into consideration the variable conditions in settler communities
on the frontier.

Significantly, Preston includes both Native Americans and Europeans
as "settlers," since migration to the region in the
eighteenth-century was especially fluid and allowed for a continual
influx of new residents. For example, the Mohawk community of Schoharie,
which served as a refuge for many Native Americans who had been
displaced during the late seventeenth century, also became a center for
Palatine Germans who had originally been brought to the region to secure
pitch and tar for the Royal Navy. In 1712, the struggling
German-speaking settlers approached Mohawk leaders in Schoharie and
sought permission to settle in the Native American community (p. 78).
According to Preston, this act was significant in two respects. First,
it demonstrates that the European settlers acknowledged that the Mohawks
were the legitimate landowners, not the government of New York. Second,
it marked the beginning of a shared community, where daily interaction
between Native American and European settlers fostered a generally
peaceful co-existence. Preston does not ignore the sporadic violence and
cultural misunderstandings that took place during this period, but
successfully shows that systemic violence was not inevitable.

After carefully establishing the close ties between settler
communities of Natives and Europeans, Preston reveals how it all
unraveled and descended into extraordinary violence during the Seven
Years' War. The author's focus on comparative local history
allows him to account for important variations in experience: While some
settler communities in New York were virtually unscathed, Pennsylvania
witnessed some of the worst bloodshed of the war. Preston argues that
historians who explain the violence on European settlers'
irrational fears and racism are missing the actual interactions between
Natives and settlers leading up to 1755. The origins of the dispute were
ultimately about land ownership, but the root of the problem was not
that Natives and Europeans did not understand the other side's
notion of property; after many years of interactions, they were quite
familiar with the different cultural expectations. Rather, as Preston
argues, each side came to resent the other's different ideas. As
this resentment grew, the Pennsylvanian government saw an opportunity to
break the potentially dangerous alliance of Native settlers and European
squatters on the frontier and assert greater authority over the region.
The mixture of local resentments and imperial desires merged to destroy
what had been decades of relatively peaceful co-existence.

The Texture of Contact is an important book that will shape
discussions of Native American history, the backcountry, and the Seven
Years' War. While he occasionally stretches a metaphor to a
breaking point, Preston writes with confidence and clarity, taking
readers from a remote backwoods trading post to a royal governor's
office and giving each its due in shaping events. In his skilled hands,
the daily work of eating and drinking with neighbors takes on a new
significance; a ruptured intimacy, not cultural misunderstanding, best
explains the violence that ravaged the backcountry in the eighteenth
century. By closely connecting local history to imperial events, Preston
provides a model of scholarship that will serve other historians well in
the future.